We have a neighbor who spreads real egg size plastic Easter eggs all over his lawn on Good Friday. They stay there without being moved or stolen which was my first major observation. Then I noticed that about an hour and a half before sunset the light hits these eggs just right and has them twinkling and shining like big bright jewels. It stirred thoughts of Jesus resurrected, of the Christ shining through all the worldly sham.

“Is there a lot of stuff you don’t understand? she said and I said pretty much the whole thing & she nodded & said that’s what she thought, but it was nice to hear it anyway & we sat there in the porch swing, listening to the wind & growing up together.”This Brian Andreas verse brought to mind Denny Flanagan. Denny was the evening paperboy in the days there was a morning AND an evening paper in Des Moines. I was 11 or 12. He was older, good-looking I guess, although I can’t remember his face now. It wasn’t a crush thing. It was that he was kind. And nice to talk with. My house had a yard that was a mini plateau…it was level and raised three or four feet until it sloped down to meet the sidewalk. Denny and I sat on the edge of that rise and talked almost every nice-weather afternoon when he delivered our newspaper. I don’t remember what we talked about. I do remember the feeling of peace and being comfortable.

My dog has a new neighbor dog named Bud. He’s an old, fat Basset Hound, friendly as can be and glad to see anyone who talks to him. Every time our Maggie needs to go out she does her business and then checks to see if Bud is out. On those occasions when she sees he is there, Maggie shivers and dances and rushes over to the fence. They touch noses through the chain link and Maggie jumps and bounds her way back to our door. Sometimes she hops back for a second go-round. You can just see the aura of excitement quivering around her. It make me laugh every time.

A Tiger Cruise is when guests of the crew are allowed to come aboard a US Navy ship and become participants on the last leg of a six-month deployment between Hawaii and the mainland. One year my husband had four “tigers”, among them an uncle who had been in the Navy in WWII. Because I was Ombudsman myself and relatives of the tigers got a little special treatment and were escorted aboard first when the ship docked in San Diego. My aunt came from Minnesota to meet the ship and my uncle of course. Somewhere in a recent conversation this event came up and my aunt remarked what wonderful memories she had of that visit. Her happy made me happy.

Sometimes we don’t know the value of a moment until it is a memory We just don’t recognize life’s most significant moments while they’re happening.

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I can only be small and delicate in my dreams, but I like the gossamer wing idea. So perchance I leave those to dreaming. And come here to share the bigger, more substantial thoughts that occupy my daytime thinkings and imagination.